Exhibition back on as law tightened

Britain's first chance to host a treasure trove of rarely seen paintings from Russia was restored yesterday, after the government hurried through laws to protect the art from seizure by foreign creditors or the heirs of pre-revolutionary owners.

MPs and peers will approve the new rules on their first day back at Westminster, January 7, just in time to allow the dazzling exhibition, including work by Van Gogh, Cézanne and Renoir, to go ahead with its opening, attended by Gordon Brown and Vladimir Putin.

Hopes of a Russian rethink of plans to close two British Council cultural offices from New Year's Day also rose, with a strong statement from the EU. The Portuguese presidency described the council's work as "vital to understanding between countries" and called for the bases in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg to stay open.

The exhibition agreement comes amid a flare-up in relations between the countries since the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London last year. The Russian federal cultural agency banned the exhibition earlier this week on the grounds that British laws were too weak to guarantee the 120 paintings' safe return.

The agency, which was badly scared when 55 paintings on loan were impounded by Swiss courts two years ago, said licences for temporary display at the Royal Academy would be issued as soon as the tougher rules are passed. The RA and the British culture secretary, James Purnell, expressed confidence that the show would now open as planned on January 26.

The academy thanked the government for bringing forward the new Tribunals, Court and Enforcement Act.

The crisis over the Russian and French masterpieces, which are expected to draw crowds as large as the 800,000 who visited the academy's Monet exhibition last year, was initially seen as part of the tit-for-tat over Litvinenko. But the British government rapidly accepted that the seizure fears were the genuine reason.

The Russian agency's spokeswoman Natalia Uvarova warned that there was still a tight deadline to keep to the original timetable. The exhibition, which also includes an exceptional range of early 20th-century Russian art, is currently in Düsseldorf and had been due to go direct to London. The ban has now diverted the collection back to Moscow, and organisers will have to work overtime revising shipping and insurance.

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